Your Share of The World

Looking at the world, there are huge areas of valuable land that can provide the human population with food and goods. But we are so many to share the resources (currently 7.5 billion persons). How much land is there per person, if the world would be divided evenly?

If you would share a small island with nine other persons, it would be fairly easy to understand how big your share would be.

10% of a 20-hectare island is 2 hectares, 10% of 250 trees is 25 trees, and so on.

We can both calculate our share and feel the size of it.

For bigger islands and populations, however, it is much harder to estimate our share of the world an the resources. - How many hectares of rain forest would I have if it was to be distributed in a ”fair” manner? How much oil? Phosphor? Plains? Fresh water? Lithium for my next cell phone?

Our world has a surfare area of 500 million square kilometers, of which some 150 millions sq km is land. Each of us would have slightly less than two hectares of land (19 780 square meters) and more than four hectares of sea. That's three soccer fields. That land includes rain forests, parking lots, deserts, plains, tundra, suburbs.

Gustav Adolf square in Malmö. The green area is 19780 square meters big and
corresponds to one persons share of the total land area. Note the buses on the left.

Forests:
One person's share of Amazonas is ~730 square meters. The share of the total rain forests is 2600 square meters and the share of the total forest area is twice that much.

Every year, the global deforestation is some 9 square meters per person and year.

Cropland
The cropland will cover 1484 square meters. Using fertilizers, pesticides and mechanized machinery, we can feed one person with that area. Unfortunately, that technology is depending on limited supplies of oil and phosphor.

Desert
The desert area for one person is 6640 square meters, one third of the total area. With global warming, one can fear that this area will grow.

Urban area
Based on the GRUMP method, the urban area for each person is 465 square meters. A quite big house with garage.

How would you handle your back yard? Would you emit tonnes of greenhouse gases, throw plastics into the sea and chop down ten trees? Every year?

When a large group of people are sharing a limited resource, the tragedy of the commons tend to deplete the resources and cause severe environmental issues. Understanding how small our world is, considering the population is an important step to bridge the gap between large-scale environmental discussions and the everyday lives we live.

My climate footprint:
I'll finish my coming blog post with a report of my climate footprint and some comments.

Climate foot-print for last 12 months: 4,7 tonnes. It is lower than the Swedish average (8 tonnes) and below the global average (6 tonnes) but still far above the sustainable level (0,7 -1,5 tonnes).

I currently live in a small flat with wife and a son. That is reducing my footprint a lot. I don't intend to live like that forever, so the housing part of my footprint will increase in the future.

I commute normally by bus to work  (800 km per month). Being on parental leave for most of this year is reducing my footprint. I expect that the travelling part will increase the next year.